I was struck by an Instagram post the other day, in which the poster was defending her love of Twilight and Bella in particular: "Personally, I love Bella & the fact that her character was sometimes weak & awkward, like myself, but strong when she needed to be, making her more relatable. She's sometimes called 'the girl who did nothing', and that's okay, too! Not every female character should have to save the world to be accepted & liked."
If you've been my friend in real life for any amount of time, you know how I feel about Bella (here's an academic paper I wrote on her, just to make it official). Her transformational journey is EPIC in my eyes, especially as it is motivated by love and her entrance into motherhood. I never saw her as a damsel in distress, but more as a distressed damsel, one who is overwhelmed by circumstances that were out of her control. (More on that later.) Then, the other night, I was watching Jupiter Ascending and during a slow part (good movie that needed work--it happens), I read a comment on a review of the movie that Jupiter was a typical damsel in distress. That made me mad. Jupiter was in a UNIVERSE where she had little to no power and no knowledge to draw on. Yeah, she was in distress! But that didn't mean she was making stupid decisions--she was doing the best she could with what she had.
So, combine that mental snit with the very entertaining-yet-informative blog post that I read earlier this week from Ilona Andrews--Brief Analysis of Alphahole in Romantic Fiction--and suddenly this blog post began to roll around in my head. I'll also be referring to Heather Farrell's great post The Reason You Love Jane Austen and I Bet You Didn't Even Know It, which clarifies what a maternal feminist is, among other things. Trust me, it's important.
There. Necessary contextual clarifications are now out of the way.
THE MAIN POINT:
In media, there are several kinds of female characters--take charge women who can save themselves, damsels in distress, distressed damsels, solely-the-love-interest heroines, the funny fat friend who provides the important information at just the right time, the missing mother, and so on. There will be shades of both, because there is very little in this life that is completely black and white, and there will be variations of them all that will amuse us, but I think that a distinction needs to be made between the two damsels.
To me, a damsel in distress is a main character who is confronted by a conflict that they *could* take on but that they choose not to handle, instead waiting for a stronger, more knowledgeable character to swoop in and save them. On the other hand, a distressed damsel is a main character who is confronted by a conflict that is *out* of their control, does their best with the power, knowledge, and resources available to them, often to the point of self-sacrifice, and are saved by a stronger, more knowledgeable character (often an alphahole who has been put in touch with their humanity--thank you, Ilona Andrews, for giving that character definition).
Examples of a damsel in distress, according to the above definition, are therefore limited to two characters that I can think of: Disney's Snow White and Princess Buttercup.
DAMSELS IN DISTRESS
Snow White is an absolute IDIOT who *will not* listen to the advice of the more experienced people around her and gets into trouble because of it. (Maybe she's a dwarfist. Anyway.) She proceeds to fall into the arms of the stranger who rescued her and agrees to let him take her away. No character growth there. She doesn't take steps to defeat the villain or learn to look outside herself or improve herself in any way.
Princess Buttercup is pretty much the same way. I have always questioned what Westley found in her to love, since she is an absolute LUMP. She allows herself to be moved from position to position, like a pawn on a chessboard. Her only redeeming action is when she jumps ship to swim away from Vizzini and crew. Even then, she doesn't evaluate her surroundings--she is merely looking to get away. Same with her suicide attempt after her marriage to Humperdinck--her attempt to end her life wasn't to achieve some greater purpose, but to remove herself from the situation, even after she had reassured Humperdinck that "...my Westley will save me." She does nothing to slow events down or make it easier for Westley. She has completely ceded control of her life to the men around her. (I must say, I do love the movie. But it's not because of her!)
STRONG, CAPABLE WOMAN WHO HAS POWER, KNOWLEDGE, AND RESOURCES AND THEREFORE IS *NOT* PART OF THIS DISCUSSION
On the other end of the heroine spectrum are characters like Rey from The Force Awakens. They have the power, knowledge, and resources to save themselves--and they DO. I like them. But I'm not talking about them.
DISTRESSED DAMSELS
Then there is the distressed damsel. A lot of so-called "damsels in distress" actually fall into this category. They are characters who are thrown into situations where they lack one or more key things: knowledge, power, or resources. However, when faced with the inevitable terrible choices forced on them by the antagonists, they do the best they can, even if it means a sacrifice of self or of something they love. They are often saved by a protector, often an alphahole who has found a new side to himself after encountering the distressed damsel and seeing the world and his situation through new eyes. It's important to note that the alphahole/protector chooses to protect the distressed damsel because they have the potential for an ideal relationship, as demonstrated in Jane Austen's novels over and over again, "...a relationship where both the man and the woman were intellectual and moral equals and treated each other with mutual respect and equality," (Farrell, The Reason You Love Jane Austen...). This ideal relationship will often cross a kind of boundary that would normally be an impediment to the relationship, but the distressed damsel and the alphahole will set aside their prejudices to make this match of equals work.
For this post's sake, I'm going to just use three characters--Sleeping Beauty, Bella Swan, and Jupiter Jones--to demonstrate the classic distressed damsel.
Sleeping Beauty (Disney version)--OK, first of all, fairy godmothers are the *worst* pick for guardians/protectors EVER. When it comes to knowledge, power, and resources, they could have armed Aurora with a complete understanding of the curse on her and made her aware of the consequences. Instead, they tell her not to talk to strangers. NOT HELPFUL, LADIES. Then they suddenly inform her that she's a princess and now she needs to leave the only life she's known--as a peasant!--to take up her new role. Because that's something you can just step into! So, Aurora has no knowledge. She has no power, because she doesn't have the magic to counter or avoid the curse. And she has no resources because she was a princess for AN HOUR before everything went to pieces. Therefore, she is a distressed damsel. To his credit, Prince Phillip met her before everything went nutso, so for him to protect and defend her makes sense--she didn't end up just falling into the arms of a stranger, a la Snow White.
(Image from fanpop.com)
Bella Swan--First, we have to identify the antagonist here. It's Victoria and the Volturi--they're the ones who seek to destroy Bella's way of life, who have the power and the resources and the knowledge to do so. Some would say that Edward is abusive because he's controlling, but as Ilona Andrews puts it in her Alphahole post, he's a caretaker with alphahole tendencies:
"...note that caretaker hero type falls closer to alphahole on the a-hole spectrum than to beta male. Caretaker hero is driven by an overwhelming urge to protect and take care of the heroine
and in the name of keeping her safe, he might exhibit serious alphahole tendencies,
as demonstrated by Edward in Twilight series."
Jupiter Jones--same story, different universe. Jupiter has no idea she's the exact genetic match of semi-alien royalty, she doesn't know that she has inherited a vast amount of property, she is schemed against by the very people (her genetic predecessor's children) who should be imparting knowledge so that she can properly use her resources and the power they bring. She doesn't receive any more powers, but at the end of the movie, her protector, Caine, shared the tech that he could with her and the viewer sees that she's learning to use the resources of the new world she is now aware of. Caine may have saved her from various dangerous situations, but every time he was aided by the fact that she was doing the best she could with the knowledge she had--even to the point [SPOILER ALERT] of willingly sacrificing her family and herself to save the Earth [END SPOILER]. Jupiter was a distressed damsel, but she was handling it.
CONCLUSION:
The difference between the damsel in distress and the distressed damsel is important. It can affect worldviews and the values we hand down to our children. As a maternal feminist, I see the value in stories that show men and women working together to solve problems, as well as stories where the woman saves herself. They both have value and resonance, and stories of the distressed damsel show that it's okay to ask for and to accept help. Asking for help or allowing someone to help her does not devalue her contribution--it means that she had the humility and the self-awareness to know that the situation had gotten beyond her.
So, the moral of the story? (TL;DR!)
It is perfectly acceptable to allow other people to help! It does not decrease your value, your worth, or your contributions. And it certainly isn't anti-feminist.
THE END
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